Paint pads intended to be used to paint edges of one surface near an adjacent surface usually employ a wheel or wheels offset but generally parallel to a paint pad surface. One such example is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,605,165. Another example is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,810,148. There are still others. From a marketing standpoint, these and similar tools are very successful and have long been staple items in paint stores and paint departments.
While all of these inventions are useful in painting a surface which abuts an adjacent surface, they require that the adjacent surface extend far enough away from the area being painted so that the wheel(s) will engage the adjacent surface and keep the paint pad bristles from contacting that adjacent surface.
The practical application of this principle prevents these trimming devices from being useful when the adjacent surface does not extend at least on the order of about 1/4 inch outwardly beyond the surface being painted. This is because this distance is the practical minimum limitation for offsetting the wheel from the pad face. This limitation is commonly encountered when the adjacent surface is the top edge of most baseboard molding used at the base of an interior wall. These edges are generally in the range of 1/8 inch to 3/32 inch thickness. Since the wheel(s) do not engage the edge of the molding, the device will not paint a neat edge. Another approach is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,172,140. This approach, as shown in FIGS. 1, 2, and 3 in that patent, uses a continuous blade element 55 which is pivoted as shown in FIG. 2 so that the pad face can be loaded without getting paint on the blade, and then uses the blade as a mask to keep the pad face away from the abutting surface as shown in FIG. 3. Although it functions with a minimally extending adjacent surface, this approach has two limitations: (1) The masking effect of the blade prevents the paint carrying bristles in the pad face from actually reaching the exact corner (the closeness is controlled by the blade thickness) which leaves a thin unpainted line next to the adjacent surface; and (2) when the adjacent surface is textured, such as is commonly found on ceilings, the blade is not as easy to use as the wheel previously described, and the blade edge scrapes the adjacent surface and is abraded by this action.
Consider this practical example: A 10'.times.12' room with a door and window will have: (A) 44 linear feet of ceiling edge to be trimmed, (B) 29 feet of door and window frame to be edge trimmed, and (C) 41 feet of baseboard edge to be trimmed. "A" can be painted efficiently with a wheel-type trimming device. "C" can be trimmed only with the blade-type device. "B" can be trimmed with either style.